


Elsa's Room

by Cantatrice18



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Discovery, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 13:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cantatrice18/pseuds/Cantatrice18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After years of being locked outside, Elsa finally allows Anna to see the room in which she was cloistered for so many years. What Anna finds there tells her more about Elsa's life than she could have possibly imagined. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>NOT incest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elsa's Room

The first night after Arendelle thawed, the sisters left the banquet table where dignitaries of every nation were celebrating the return of summer and walked arm in arm through the halls of the castle. When they reached Elsa’s room, Anna felt a moment of unease. It had been so very long since she’d even caught a glimpse of her sister’s bedroom, and she could not remember ever having entered it. Once Elsa had moved out of their shared bedroom and into one of her own, the door had been shut to Anna (in more ways than one). Now she was finally about to see what lay beyond the solid oak and delicate blue enamel, but the mere fact that she’d seen only a door for more than a decade drove home the fact that she really did not know Elsa at all. What did her sister even like? How had she spent those endless days, cooped up all alone? There was really only one way to find out. Closing her eyes, she let Elsa lead her into the chamber.

Anna did not open her eyes until Elsa let go of her hand. Then she looked around with interest at the cream colored walls, the blue canopy over the bed, and the solid desk in the corner. It was remarkably spare, with only one lone bookcase full of serious looking volumes. She heard Elsa clear her throat and glanced back at her sister to find the young woman looking awkwardly at the floor, her hands clasped behind her. “You can look around if you want. I know you haven’t seen it before, so I understand if you’re curious, but I warn you, there isn’t much to see.” 

Anna needed no more bidding as she took off around the room, examining the little wooden chair in the corner and the small portrait of their parents that hung by the door. The room looked as though it had been frozen in time, like nothing new had entered it since Elsa first arrived. “What did you do for, you know…fun?”

“Fun?” Elsa’s voice made it sound like the concept was entirely unknown to her.

“Yeah, fun,” repeated Anna, wrinkling her nose as she pulled a leather-bound book off the shelf that proved to be ‘A History of Arandelle’s Agriculture and Trade’. “You can’t have done just this all the time.”

“Well, I…” Elsa was looking rather uncomfortable as Anna pawed through her things. “I made do. Boredom helps make everything more interesting. I think even you could find it in you to read the complete laws of the kingdom, if you were stuck in a room with nothing else to entertain you.”

“Not a chance!” Anna shook her head, laughing. “I would just use my imagination, and entertain myself that way!”

Elsa returned her smile, but her expression darkened almost immediately. “With your imagination, I bet that would work. With mine, though…well, it’s safer to stay in reality, let’s put it that way.” Her eyes widened as she saw Anna reach behind the desk. “No, wait—“

But her words came too late, as Anna had already pulled out a large sketchbook, of the type artists used, from behind the desk. “Aha!” she cried, looking at the blushing Elsa. “So, it’s art that captures your fancy is it? Let’s see how good you are.” Bending over, she laid the book on the table and opened to the first page. 

It was as though all the air had been sucked from the room. Anna looked down to find herself staring directly into the eyes of her father, the king, so meticulously rendered that the work surpassed even that of the most expert court portrait artists. A drawing of the queen followed; Elsa had captured the wistful expression their mother had so often worn, and the sight of it brought tears to Anna’s eyes. The next page made her breath catch in her throat. Laughing, smiling in gleeful innocence, a picture of Anna as a young child grinned up at her from the paper. She looked to be about four years old, around the age (Anna realized with a jolt) when Elsa had last seen her face to face for more than a minute. Mesmerized, she turned to the next drawing, and the next. The drawings were not all of people – a whole set depicted the view from Elsa’s window during different seasons, and several appeared to be architectural drawings. Anna saw her own face reappear in several later drawings, but the style of drawing had changed. The lines were less crisp, less distinct, and far less recognizable than the first sketch. 

“I didn’t know what you looked like.”

Anna jumped; Elsa had managed to sneak up behind her as she’d been engrossed in the drawings, and had seen which drawings she looked at. Turning, Anna saw an expression of deepest sadness on her sister’s face. Elsa reached out a trembling hand to smooth the corner of a sketch that depicted a younger Anna playing in the snow. “I had to guess, from the glimpses I got of you as you ran through the halls and played outside within view of my window. Now that I see you up close, I’ll go back and correct them.”

“Don’t, Elsa, please.” Anna felt some of Elsa’s sadness sink into her own heart as she realized for the thousandth time since learning her sister’s secret just how lonely Elsa must have been. “You can make new ones. I’ll sit for a portrait, if you’d like. I won’t even fidget, I promise!” Her smile was bright, but her heart was not entirely in it. Reaching forward, she took her sister’s hands in hers. “You’ll never have to guess about me again, because I’ll always be here. I’ll never abandon you, and you’ll never be alone again. That is, unless you want to be. I mean, I don’t want to cut into your alone time, if you need that, which you probably will, I can just wait close by…” Her words trailed off as Elsa pulled her into a tight hug, and she felt the tears she’d been holding back begin to fall. “Just don’t shut me out again, please?”

“Never.” Elsa’s soft voice had a firm resolve to it. “From now on, the door is open. And neither of us will ever have to be alone.”


End file.
